While Alaskan salmon canneries often conjure up images of the hustling and bustling summer slime line, there's an often overlooked story of what happens in the off-season. In the words of the author's late Uncle Harlan Adkison, "The winter watchman puts the cannery to bed in the fall and wakes it up in the spring."
Ella Nielsen lived more than half of her life in salmon canneries along Nushagak Bay, adjacent to Southwest Alaska's legendary Bristol Bay. She grew up the daughter of a winter watchman and later married a winter watchman and then a second, after her first husband lost his life while on the job.
Dinon educates her readers about cannery life by telling her grandmother's story, of both work and of play, largely through family accounts and many previously unseen historical photographs. She also documents her own experiences working in the cannery's "egg house" or serving up coffee during "Mug Up." Ella's story lives on in her grandchildren and great-grandchildren who, although many have moved from the area, remain connected through their own memories as well as ongoing ties to the salmon fishery.
